Flea Market Love

My in laws have been telling me about a flea market they go to every spring and fall.  Finally, this past Sunday, my husband and I packed the boys up and we all went to check it out.  

Wouldn't you know it rained early Sunday morning and it turned the flea market grounds into a mud pit?  (If you've read my blog before, you would probably expect it though).  We're talking ankle deep mud in places.  Mud and two young, potentially bored boys?  Not a good recipe, but I am happy to say they did great and the flea market was a success!  We were still a mess, but it could have been so much worse!

I wish I had taken my camera, but its bulky and I just didn't think it was a good idea with the rain and with keeping an eye on my kids.  There wasn't anything too unusual about this flea market, but I would have loved to have shown you "The Guys on the Hill," as my MIL calls them.  They have a huge section of goods set up on a hill.  Boxes and boxes of things just thrown together and set down on the grass.  Tons of furniture, old doors, stained glass windows, dishes, books, records, mirrors...you name it, they have it! 

As you shop, they shout out, "Good deals here!"  or "Lots of good deals on the hill today!"   Then, when you stop to look at something, say a chair, they'll say, "Good deal on that chair".  Then you ask how much, they give you an ok price and you counter with an awesome price that they are pretty good about taking!  Love that!

So, what did I get, you ask?  Let me show you!

First thing I bought was this old milk crate for $5.  Its fairly heavy with a metal bottom and in great shape.

Then I found this light:

I loved it, but I needed two that matched for my back patio.  So, as I was holding it, my husband called me from about 50 feet away and held up another one!  It was a slightly different color, but the style was identical!  We asked the man how much and he said $10 for the pair.  Not bad, but my husband countered with $5 and we settled at $7!  Woot!

Here they are together.  Forgive my husband.  He forgets he's not 15 anymore.

I found this vent at another seller's and thought it would look so nice painted and in the laundry room. 

I paid $5 for it and believe me, it is heavy!  Unfortunately, its too big for the laundry room, but I will find another place for it, don't you worry!  If I can get a second similar one, it will go in the basement when we redo it. 

My husband even found an old small gas tank that he plans on redoing.

It was $30, which he tells me is a great deal. 

I painted the lights already and they are even up!

Here's the pitiful lights we had before.  Don't judge.  Our house was a foreclosure and the old light fixtures were stripped out and replaced with cheapos.



And here is the after:

I love the glow it gives with the lights on!

Not bad for $3.50 each!

This flea market happens again in the fall and I am definitely going again, only earlier this time! 



Finally! Some luck at Goodwill!

I have to admit...I am green with envy when I hear about all the great finds you all discover when shopping at Goodwill, Salvation Army, Craigslist, Habitat, etc.  $10 buffets, $3 tables, a whole bedroom set for $18.50 (ok, maybe I made that last one up, but I bet someone out there has done it or even beat that deal-outside of being given something) Anyway,  I never find anything!  ::insert annoying whine here::  When I do find something that catches my eye, it is waaaaay overpriced!  ::more whining::

There is a Salvation Army store about 10 minutes from my house.  I have been in there maybe 6 or 7 times and I have left empty handed every.single.time.  But...not this time! 

So I went in yesterday morning and found this:

The price?  $4.99, with half off that!!  Finally.  A decent deal.  The wheeels were turning in my head with what I wanted to do with this soon to be lovely thing.  The poor girl had seen better days.

I paid my $2.49 and brought her home with hopes of painting her white and replacing the current black shelf above my toilet in the bathroom we're almost finished remodeling with this one. 

So, I hung her up outside and wouldn't you know it was incredibly windy so she was spinning like a top as I tried to paint.  It made for some very interesting and clutsy spray painting.

So after one coat (of Rustoleum's Heirloom White), she looked like this and I had almost as much paint on me and you see on her.

I finished her up in the garage after meticulousy laying down paper so that the entire floor and all of my husband's toys were protected so that I didn't have another paint mishap and have to hear all about it from him.  (Yes, I said ANOTHER paint mishap and no, the wind blowing my shelf around isn't what I'm talking about...more on that in a bit).

I also picked up a few knobs at Home Depot for the shelf that were gold and $1.19 each.  I likled very similar ones in ORB that were $3 each, but I couldn't justify the price difference.  I bought the gold ones and sprayed painted them to look like this:

After I painted her white,  I held her up in my bathroom and decided NOPE, it wasn't going to work.  The white just didn't look right with the other things I have on the wall.  OK, I probably should have thought things through before I just started spraying away, but I'm impulsive that way.  You'll see this is a recurring theme with me.

So, I went back to the garage and after a few coats of black last night and some distressing this morning with fine sandpaper, my new shelf now looks like this:

I ran into a little problem when I sprayed my clearcoat.  Some of the surface cracked!  After doing a little reading, I found out that the paint underneath was not completely dry when I sprayed the clearcoat and since the clearcoat dries so much quicker (I guess), the surface gets stretched, hence the cracking.  So now I have a little repairing to do, but oh well.  What's done is done!  And I am a little bit done with it for today, to be honest.  Here's another after pic:

Oh, and my other little paint mishap had do with  my doorknobs that I mentioned here.  Since I was in a painting mood yesterday, I thought I would just quickly touch up a the knob on my laundry room door.  So, I put some paper behind it and sprayed and all was fine.  Since that went well, I decided to do the pantry door.  At that time, and I am not blaming him, my 4 year old walked up and started asking what I was doing and begging for treats, etc.  Well, since I am easily distracted, I forgot to be precise with my backdrop while painting and my door looked like this (excuse the blurriness):

Oh my God!  No good!  I have to admit that even my son was horrified, but he became really distraught when I took a picture of it for you guys!  "MOM!  Why are taking a picture?!"  Luckily, Magic Eraser exists and no one but us, and now you, knew what happened!

Oh, and one last thing.  My kitchen ceiling.  My mom came over for a visit the other day and as usual, had some tiny presents for my boys.  This time it was little men that stick to the wall when you throw them there.  Do you see where I'm going?  Well, SOMEONE, not me, but either my mom or husband told them to throw them up on the ceiling.  They thought it was hilarious.  Turns out, those guys really stick.  We are on day three of my ceiling looking like this:

 



Yup.  Those guys really stick!  If you look close, you'd think they were going to fall any minute now....SEE:

...but nope.  Its been three days!  I refuse to remove them out of principle (not sure what principle yet) and also because once they are down, they'll just end up somewhere else...


Have a great day!

Spray Painting Doorknobs.. (big) *SIGH*

Happy Friday!!

What a busy week!  Unfortunately it was a week busy with nonhome projects for me.  Even though I love it, I don't normally work very often outside of the home, but this week was a little different and that meant I didn't get a whole lot done here.  We're almost finished with the bathroom.  We're putting up some crown molding this weekend and I have one panel to poly for the vanity and one wall to finish decorating and then its D.O.N.E.!  So far, I love it!

Since I don't have anything I am currently working on, I thought I'd show you some doorknobs I spray painted last year.  When we moved into our home 2 1/2 years ago, we had shiny brass doorknobs on all the doors.  Since it would be quite expensive to replace them all and we had a ginormous list of other things to spend our money on (who doesn't, right?), I wanted to try to spray paint them. 

So, here they are before:

And here they are after, in ORB:

Lovely, isn't it?

To do it, I sanded the old finish very thoroughly, sprayed primer on them and then used Rustoleum's ORB.  Finally, I sprayed a clear coat on them and waited a day before reinstalling them.  The whole process was very easy.

Here is where the big *sigh* comes in....a year later, they have not held up well.  :(

 Honestly, they still look better now than before (for the most part), but they are not holding up to the wear and tear at all.   The smaller knobs on our closet doors where we just use the tips of our fingers to open them are doing ok, but the larger lever doorknobs where we use our whole hand to open them are not. 

Looking back, I probably didn't let the knobs cure long enough before we put them back on.  Also, I used a primer, but not a primer specifically for metal.  Finally, I was probably too heavy handed (although I did do it without any drips anywhere) with the spray paint.  I'm disappointed, but I think I am just going to cut out a backdrop for the knobs and just keep a can of paint on hand to do touchups every so often, with them right there on the door.  I still need to do my upstairs, so I am curious if I see any difference when I correct some of my errors from the first go around.  Truly though, I have a feeling I am going to be replacing these babies with the real thing one by one sometime in the future.  Maybe (or probably more than likely) I won't even attempt to to spray the upstairs knobs.  We'll see when the time comes.  From a little googling and talking to other people, it  sounds like my experience isn't an isolated thing, unfortunately.

How about you?  Have you tried spray painting your doorknobs?  How have they help up?  I'd love to hear about your experience...or if you have a favorite uncle who works in the doorknob industry and is looking for a poor soul to take pity on by donating, say 17 sets, not including closets to, I'd love to hear from you as well!...What?  A girl can dream, can't she?

Have a fabulous weekend!!